The Poetry Center at Smith College
will present poet Tracie Morris at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March
1, in Wright Hall Auditorium.

Morris is at the forefront of the burgeoning
international "spoken word" scene. She made a name
for herself in the early 1990s at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the
"spoken word" mecca of New York, where in 1993 she
was named champion of the Nuyorican Grand Slam. In addition,
she won the championship of the 1993 National Haiku Slam and
has been acclaimed for her collaborations with other artists,
including jazz musicians Donald Byrd and Vernon Reid.

Morris wrote the lyrics for choreographer
Ralph Lemon's epic "Geography" (Brooklyn Academy of
Music, 1999) and is currently at work on a commissioned project
for The Kitchen, a popular art space and performance center in
New York. Her tough and sassy hip-hop rhymes have been featured
in many anthologies, as well as on radio and television, and
she has toured extensively in the United States and abroad. The
Brooklyn native was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts
Fellowship, New Faces/New Voices Fellowship and a Franklin Furnace
Artist in Exile grant and has published two collections of poems,
"Chap-T-her Won" and "Intermission."

Morris' visit to the Valley is presented
in collaboration with New WORLD Theater of the University of
Massachusetts. Morris will conduct a youth workshop in the Amherst
Middle School, a presentation for a theater class at the University
and a master class for Smith students. She'll also make a special
guest appearance at an "open mic" reading from 9 p.m.
to 12 a.m.on Wednesday, Feb. 28, at The Mecca (formerly The Hot
Club), 10 Stearns Square, Springfield, (413) 746-2291.

The March 1 reading at Smith College
-- which is free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible
-- will be followed by a bookselling and signing. For more information,
call Cindy Furtek in the Poetry Center office at (413) 585-4891
or Ellen Doré Watson, director, at (413) 585-3368.